CRM 2011 to 2013 (Orion) Top 10 Upgrade Tips and Considerations (part 1)

This post aims at helping organizations understand the impact of upgrading to CRM 2013 and provides tips for assessing the upgrade considerations. It does not provide an exhaustive list of all the possible items you need to validate before upgrading but it provides a list of the most common ones.

So it’s time to upgrade to CRM 2013 and the questions we always get are:

What is the impact?

What do I need to do to make sure my organization will continue to work in CRM 2013?

What are the tips and tricks for upgrading to CRM 2013? How can I estimate the effort to upgrade?

 

So I will attempt to provide a checklist of the top 10 most common aspects of the upgrade that you should keep in consideration. In this post I will address the top 5 and you can expect a follow-up with the next 5.

 

1. Deprecated Features

Some features from CRM 2011 were already marked as obsolete and have been deprecated in the new version. I am providing a list to the best of my knowledge of those features. If you have a CRM 2011 environment that you upgraded from CRM 4.0 it is more likely that this will be a problem since many CRM 4.0 features/endpoints/APIs have been deprecated although they continued to work on CRM 2011.

A. CRM 4.0 plugins and custom workflow activities. If you have plugin assemblies that were compiled against the CRM 4.0 SDK then you will have to re-write and recompile against the CRM 2013 or CRM 2011 SDK.

B. CRM 4.0 client side scripting. If you have javascripts that make use of the CRM 4.0 client side scripting API (e.g. “crmForm”) you will need to re-write them to make use of the CRM 2013 or CRM 2011 API (e.g. Xrm.Page…).

C. 2007 web service endpoint. If you have any external applications or any code that is referencing the 2007 endpoint (asmx) then you need to update them and recompile then using the CRM 2013 or 2011 SDK and point to the endpoints supported in CRM 2013 such as the OrganizationService (WCF) or the REST endpoint (OData).

D. ISV folder. The ISV folder was made obsolete in CRM 2011 for hosting custom web applications inside the CRM ASP.net root. This folder is no longer supported in CRM 2013 so you would have to move those custom web pages to a separate IIS website.

E. Reduced ribbon support. With CRM 2013 new user experience you might have noticed that the ribbon has been replaced with the new command bar. The good news is that when you upgrade, most of your ribbon customizations will be automatically upgraded to the new command bar model, only a small subset of ribbon controls are no longer supported: Dropdown, MRU Split Button, Textbox, Insert Table, Gallery and Gallery Button, Combobox and Color Picker. It is quite rare to make use of those controls which are no longer supported so most organizations will be fine after the upgrade but it is always a good idea to review your custom ribbon rules and make sure you are not making use of those controls. In case you are, you’d need to replace them by some of the supported command bar controls (see SDK for details). The other important consideration with CRM 2013 is that the command bar will only display 5 commands and the rest need to be expanded by clicking on the “…” icon. Therefore, fore usability, you might need to refactor your command bar to place the true 5 most used commands in the bar and move all others to the “expand” section.

F. Read-optimized forms. This was a short-lived feature of CRM 2011 that came with CRM 2011 UR7 and has been removed in CRM 2013. More information on this feature here.

G. Duplicate detection during create and update in forms. In CRM 2013 duplicate detection will not kick-in during record creation or updating via the application forms. This is a well known limitation and although you might find tons of workarounds on the web (e.g. this article from MVP Adrii Butenko), it is possible that Microsoft will bring this functionality back. For now, you might need to do a custom extension for duplicate detection if you rely on it. Note that duplicate detection is still supported when making SDK calls and setting the SuppressDuplicateDetection optional parameter in your create or update request.

 

2. Unsupported customizations

Having unsupported customizations is never a good idea and I have blogged in the past why: The Risks of Unsupported Customizations in CRM. So it would be a great opportunity to review which unsupported customizations you have since they will likely break when you upgrade to CRM 2013. The tricky question is: How do I identify unsupported customizations? As a rule of thumb, any extensions to CRM that you make which are not explicitly documented in the CRM SDK are unsupported. Now, that might be too vague and sometimes not completely accurate but it is my favorite way of defining unsupported customizations. If you want to be a little more specific here is a list of unsupported customizations that I compiled from the SDK and a couple from experience:

• JavaScript developers are used to interacting with Document Object Model (DOM) elements in code. You might use the window.getElementById method or the jQuery library. You are free to use these techniques in your HTML web resources, but they are not supported to access elements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM application pages or entity forms. Instead, access to entity form elements are exposed through the Xrm.Page object model. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM development team reserves the right to change how pages are composed, including the ID values for elements, so using the Xrm.Page object model protects your code from changes in how pages are implemented.
• We do not recommend using jQuery in form scripts and ribbon commands (Note: previously this was called out as unsupported and in CRM 2011 has been updated to “not recommended” in CRM 2013). If jQuery accesses the page DOM then it would be clearly unsupported for CRM forms.
• Modifications to any .aspx, .css, .htm, .js, .xml, .jpg, or .gif files or the addition of files in the wwwroot directories of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application, Microsoft Dynamics CRM tools, or Microsoft Dynamics CRM files located at Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM. However, if you have made changes to these files, these files are checked for modifications and will not be overwritten.
• Modifications to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM website (file and website settings). Custom solutions should be installed in a different website. This includes modifications to the file system access control lists (ACLs) of any files on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server.
• Use of client certificates is not supported by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK. If you configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM website to require IIS client certificates, you will get authentication failures for any applications that were built using the SDK.
• Modifications to the physical schema of the database, other than adding or updating indexes. This includes any actions performed against the database without using the System Customization capabilities in the web application or using the metadata APIs that are described in this SDK documentation. Modifying tables, stored procedures, or views in the database is not supported. Adding tables, stored procedures, or views to the database is also not supported because of referential integrity or upgrade issues. For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 on-premises deployments, adding indexes is supported per the guidelines in the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide.” This applies to all Microsoft Dynamics CRM databases and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook local database.
  When you change the database without using the support methods for system customization, you run the risk of problems occurring during updates and upgrades.
• Data (record) changes in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database using SQL commands or any technology other than those described in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK.
• Referencing any Microsoft Dynamics CRM dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) other than the following:
  • Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll
  • Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.dll
  • Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow.dll
  • Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.dll
  • Microsoft.Crm.Outlook.Sdk.dll
  • Microsoft.Crm.Tools.EmailProviders.dll
• The use of application programming interfaces (APIs) other than the documented APIs in the web services DeploymentService, DiscoveryService, Organization Data Service, SOAP endpoint for web resources and OrganizationService.
• To achieve the appearance and behavior of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the reuse of any Microsoft Dynamics CRM user interface controls, including the grid controls. These controls may change or be overwritten during an upgrade. We do not recommend that you use or change the Default.css file in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM root installation folder.
• The reuse of any Microsoft Dynamics CRM JavaScript code, including ribbon commands. This code may change or be overwritten during an upgrade.
• Modifications to any one of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms or adding new forms, such as custom .aspx pages, directly to Microsoft Office Outlook or making changes to .pst files. These changes will not be upgraded.
• Making customizations except when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM supported tools available offline in the CRM for Outlook.
• The use of custom HttpModules to inject HTML/DHTML into the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Forms.
• Creating a plug-in assembly for a standard Microsoft Dynamics CRM assembly (Microsoft.Crm.*.dll) or performing an update or delete of a platform created pluginassembly is not supported.
• Creating an Internet Information Services (IIS) application inside the Microsoft Dynamics CRM website for any VDir and specifically within the ISV folder is not supported. The <crmwebroot>\ISV folder is no longer supported.
• Editing a solutions file to edit any solution components other than ribbons, forms, SiteMap, or saved queries is not supported. For more information, see When to edit the customizations file. Defining new solution components by editing the solutions file is not supported. Editing web resource files exported with a solution is not supported. Except for the steps documented in Maintain managed solutions, editing the contents of a managed solution is not supported.
• Silverlight Application Library Caching is not supported.
• Adding custom indexes is not unsupported but I am not 100% clear about updating/deleting built-in indexes.

 

 

3. Code inspection or analysis tools

There are a number of tools that you can install to help you assess the code that you need to review before upgrading. These tools will typically find most of the issues with your existing code and tell you what action you need to fix them before upgrading. However, do not rely 100% on these tools as they are not fully deterministic, but it is a great deal of help. Here are some examples:

CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool

CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool

Microsoft Baseline Configuration Analyzer for CRM (determines if your CRM 2013 environment is configured according to best practices)

 

4. ISV solutions

If your CRM organization is using third-party solutions it is always required that you reach out to the ISV and validate the compatibility with CRM 2013 before making any assumptions. In some cases the solution will upgrade automatically while in other cases manual intervention will be required to make the ISV solution work with the new version.

 

5. Mobility

Because of the limited mobile functionality of CRM 2011 (mobile express) it is easy to assume that there is no effort required to migrate your mobile express application to CRM 2013 except perhaps some testing effort. However, if you are thinking of taking advantage of the new mobile application (e.g. CRM for tablets) in CRM 2013 then you need to consider that if you are in On-Premise you might need to include additional effort to enable IFD if it is not already configured. Mobile application in CRM 2013 is only supported with claims authentication and IFD mode. Additionally, if you have third party mobile solutions (e.g. Resco, CWR) then refer to the previous paragraph.